9
* * *
Preferring not to explain the disappearence of Xavier and the Cécilia in front of Aristide, I decided to deliver the message to Alain myself. It was almost dark by the time I reached La Houssinière. It was cold too; what had been a squally wind in the hollow of Les Salants caused wires to squeal and flags to rattle on this, the southernmost part of the island. The sky was tumultuous, the pale strip above the beach already half-engulfed by gaudy purple thunderheads; the waves bore chevrons of white; birds settled in expectation. Jojo-le-Goëland was leaving the esplanade carrying a placard saying that due to weather warnings, the evening’s return trip to Fromentine aboard Brismand 1 had been canceled; a couple of glum-looking tourists with suitcases followed him, protesting.
There was no sign of either Alain or Matthias on the esplanade. I stood at the seawall and squinted out over Les Immortelles, shivering a little, regretting not having brought a coat with me. From the café behind me came a sudden surge of voices, as if a door had been opened.
“Why, it’s Mado, ma soeur, heh, come to pay us a call.”
“Little Mado, looking cold, heh, looking veryvery chilly indeed.”
It was the ancient nuns, Soeur Extase and Soeur Thérèse, both coming out of the Chat Noir with cups of what looked like café-devinnoise.
“You should come inside, heh, Mado? Have a hot drink?”
I shook my head. “Thanks. I’m all right.”
“It’s the bad south wind again,” said Soeur Thérèse. “That’s what brought back the jellyfish, Brismand says. There’s a plague of them every—”
“Thirty years, ma soeur, when the tides run from the Gulf. Nasty things.”
“I remember the last time,” said Soeur Thérèse. “He waited and waited at Les Immortelles, watching the tides—”
“But she never came back, though, did she, ma soeur?” Both nuns shook their heads. “No, she never did. Nevernever. Not at all.”
“Who do you mean, she?” I asked.
“That girl, of course.” The two nuns looked at me. “He was in love with her. Both of them were, those brothers—”
Brothers? I stared at the nuns, baffled. “Do you mean my father and P’titJean?”
“Summer of the Black Year.” The sisters nodded again and beamed. “We remember it perfectly. We were young then—”
“Younger, anyway—”
“She said she was leaving. She gave us a letter.”
“Who did?” I asked, confused.
The sisters fixed their black eyes on me. “The girl, of course,” said Soeur Extase impatiently. “Eleanore.”
The name took me so much by surprise that the sound of the bell scarcely registered at first; it clanged flatly across the harbor, the sound ricocheting off the water like a stone. A few people came crowding out of Le Chat Noir to see what was happening. Someone knocked against me; a drink spilled; when I looked up again, the momentary confusion had dispersed, and Soeur Thérèse and Soeur Extase had vanished.
“What’s Père Alban up to, ringing the church bell at this time?” asked Joël lazily, a cigarette hanging from his lip. “There’s no mass, is there?”
“I don’t think so,” said René Loyon.
“Maybe it’s a fire,” suggested Lucas Pinoz, the mayor’s cousin.
People seemed to think fire was the likeliest possibility; on a small island like Le Devin there are no emergency services to speak of, and the church bell is often the quickest way to sound an alarm. Someone shouted Fire!, and there was some confusion, with more drinkers hustling one another at the café entrance, but as Lucas pointed out, there was no red glow in the sky and no smell of burning.
“We rang the bell in ’55, heh, when the old church got hit by lightning,” declared old Michel Dieudonné.
“There’s something off Les Immortelles out there,” said René Loyon, who had been standing on top of the seawall. “Something on the rocks.”
It was a boat. Easy enough to see it now we knew where to look, a hundred meters out, grounded on the same snarl of rocks that had done for the Eleanore the previous year. My breath caught. With no visible sail, and at that distance, it was impossible to say whether it was either of our Salannais boats.
“It’s a hulk,” said Joël with authority. “Must have been out there for hours. No reason for anyone to panic now.” He stubbed out his cigarette beneath his boot.
Jojo-le-Goëland was unconvinced. “We should try shining a light out there,” he suggested. “Might be something to salvage. I’ll bring the tractor.”
Already people were assembling under the seawall. The church bell, its warning work done, fell silent. Jojo’s tractor made its way unsteadily across the uneven beach toward the sand’s edge; its powerful headlight shone aross the water.
“I can see it now,” said René. “It’s whole, but not for long.”
Michel Dieudonné nodded. “Tide’s too high to get to her now, even with the Marie Joseph. And with a squall blowing—” He spread his hands expressively. “Whoever she belongs to, she’s finished now.”
“Oh God!” It was Paule Lacroix, Joël’s mother, standing above us on the esplanade. “There’s someone out there in the water!”
Faces turned toward her. The spotlight from the tractor was too bright; only the dark hull of the crippled boat was visible among the reflections.
“Turn off the light!” yelled Mayor Pinoz, who had just arrived with Père Alban.
It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. The sea looked black now, the boat a shade of indigo. Straining our eyes, we tried to make out a pale blur among the waves.
“I see an arm! There’s a man in the water!”
Someone screamed some distance to my left, in a voice I recognized. I turned around and saw Damien’s mother, her face shapeless with distress beneath a thick island scarf. Alain was standing on the seawall with a pair of binoculars, though with the south wind in his face and the growing height of the waves, I doubted whether he could see anything more than the rest of us could. Matthias was standing by his side, looking helplessly at the water.
Damien’s mother saw me and ran down the beach toward me, her coat flapping in the wind. “It’s the Eleanore 2!” She clung to me breathlessly. “I know it is! Damien!”
I tried to calm her. “You don’t know that,” I said as calmly as I could. But she was beyond comfort. She began to make a high keening noise, half-wail, half-words. I caught her son’s name several times, but nothing more. I realized that I hadn’t mentioned the fact that Xavier and Ghislain had taken the Cécilia; but it occurred to me that to speak of it now might simply make things worse.
“If there is someone out there, we have to make an effort to reach them, heh?” It was Mayor Pinoz, half-drunk but trying gamely to take command of the situation.
Jojo-le-Goëland shook his head. “Not in my Marie Joseph,” he said adamantly.
But Alain was already racing down the path from the esplanade toward the harbor. “Just try stopping me,” he yelled.
The Marie Joseph was certainly the only vessel with enough stability to maneuver close to the stranded boat; even so, the operation would be almost impossible in this weather.
“There’s no one there!” wailed Jojo indignantly, starting up the beach after Alain. “You can’t take her out on your own!”
“Then go with him!” I said urgently. “If that boy’s out there—”
“If so, he’s finished,” muttered Joël. “There’s no sense in joining him.”
“Then I’ll go!” I took the steps up to the Rue des Immortelles two at a time. There was a boat on the rocks; a Salannais was in danger. In spite of my anxiety my heart was singing. A fierce joy engulfed me—this was how it feels to be an islander; this was how it feels to belong—no other place commands such loyalties, such stony, steadfast love.
There were people running alongside me—I saw Père Alban and Matthias Guénolé, who I’d guessed could not be far away; Omer was lumb
ering after them as fast as he could; Marin and Adrienne were staring from the lit window of La Marée. Groups of Houssins watched us run, some confused, others incredulous; I didn’t care. I ran for the harbor.
Alain was already there. People gaped at him from the jetty but few seemed inclined to join him in the Marie Joseph. Matthias was calling from the street; I heard more raised voices behind him. A man in a faded vareuse was taking in the Marie Joseph’s sails with his back turned to me; as Omer caught up, out of breath, the man turned around and I recognized Flynn.
There was no time for me to react. I saw him catch my eye, then he looked away, almost with indifference. Alain was already settling himself at the helm. Omer was struggling with the unfamiliar engine. Père Alban, standing on the jetty, was trying to calm Damien’s mother, who had arrived out of breath a few minutes after the rest. Alain spared me a brief glance, as if appraising whether I was fit to help, then he nodded.
“Thank you.”
People were still crowding around us, some trying to help where they could. Objects were thrown—almost randomly, it seemed—into the Marie Joseph; a boat hook, a coil of rope, a bucket, a blanket, an electric flashlight. Someone handed me a flask with brandy in it; someone else gave Alain a pair of gloves. As we pulled away from the jetty Jojo-le-Goëland threw me his coat. “Try not to get it wet, heh?” he said gruffly.
Getting out of the harbor was deceptively easy. Although the boat pitched a little, the harbor was almost completely sheltered, and we steered with little difficulty through the narrow central channel toward the open sea. Buoys and dinghies bobbed around us; I leaned forward in the bow to push them out of the way as we passed.
Then the sea hit us. In the short time it had taken us to get organized, the wind had risen; now it moaned through the wires, and the spray was as hard as gravel. The Marie Joseph was a good little workhorse but not built for heavy weather; she sat low in the water, like an oyster boat; waves crashed across her bow. Alain cursed.
“Do you see her yet, heh?” he yelled at Omer.
Omer shook his head. “I see something,” he shouted against the wind. “I still don’t know if it’s the Eleanore 2.”
“Bring her around!” I could barely hear his voice. Water blinded me. “We have to take it face on!” I could see what he meant. Steering straight into the wind was tricky; but the waves were high enough to tip us right over if we let them push us aside. We moved with sickening slowness, riding one wave only to have the next slap us down. The Eleanore 2—if it was she—was barely visible but for the wild ruffles of foam around her. Of the figure we thought we had glimpsed in the water, there was no sign.
Twenty minutes later I was not sure whether we had made even a few dozen meters; at night distances are deceptive, and the sea took all our attention. I was vaguely conscious of Flynn in the bottom of the boat, bailing water, but there was no time to think about that, or to remember the last time we had been in a similar situation together.
I could still see lights on Les Immortelles; from a great distance I thought I heard voices. Alain shone the flashlight out to sea; the water looked gray-brown in its weak light, but at last I could see the crippled boat, closer now and recognizable, broken almost in two across a spine of rock.
“It’s her!” The wind had stolen the anguish from Alain’s voice; it sounded thin and distant to me, a whistle through reeds. “Get down!” This to Flynn, who had moved so far forward that he was almost hanging from the Marie Joseph’s nose. For a second I glimpsed something in the water, something pallid that was not foam. It was visible for an instant, then seemed to roll with the wave.
“I see someone!” yelled Flynn.
Alain sprang for the bow, leaving Omer to control the boat. I grabbed a rope and flung it; but a vicious cat’s-paw of wind blew it back in my face, dripping wet, and lashed me savagely across the eyes. I fell back, my eyes closed and streaming. When I was able to open them once more I found the world oddly out of focus; in a blur I could just make out Flynn and Alain, one holding onto the other in a desperate trapeze while beneath them the sea hitched and plummeted. Both were soaking; Alain had lashed a rope around his ankle to keep himself aboard; Flynn, who was carrying a looped rope, had gone even farther and was actually leaning out, one foot wedged in the pit of Alain’s stomach and the other pressing against the side of the Marie Joseph, both arms spread wide into the turbulence below. Something white flashed by; Flynn dived for it and missed.
Behind us Omer struggled to keep the boat’s nose to the wind. The Marie Joseph pitched sickly; Alain staggered; a wave rolled over both men and pulled the boat to the side. Cold water crashed onto all our heads. For a second I feared that both men had been knocked overboard; the Marie Joseph’s bow sagged, barely a centimeter from the sea. I did what I could to bail water while the rocks surged into view, shockingly close. Then there was a terrible sound on the boat’s hull, a grating noise and a crack like a lightning strike. We tensed in anticipation—but it was the Eleanore 2 that had given way, her spine finally broken, falling into two pieces on the creaming rocks. Even so, we were far from safe, drifting as we were toward the floating debris. I felt something judder against the boat’s side. Something seemed to catch underneath—but then a wave lifted us, and the Marie Joseph cleared the rock just in time, with Omer using the boat hook to push us free of the wreckage. I looked up; Alain was still holding his position in the bow, but Flynn was gone. Only for a moment, though; with a hoarse cry of relief I saw him emerge again from beneath a wall of water with something—a loop of rope—in his hands. Something bobbed briefly into view as he and Alain began to haul it in. Something white.
Much as I longed to know what was going on I had to keep bailing; the Marie Joseph was as full as she could take, and we were all fully occupied. I heard shouts and dared to glance up, but Alain’s back stopped me from seeing very much. I bailed for five minutes at least, or until we were out of range of those terrible rocks. I thought I heard a distant, ghostly cheer from Les Immortelles.
“Who is it?” I yelled. My voice was snatched from my mouth by the wind. Alain didn’t turn around. Flynn was struggling with a sheet of tarpaulin from the bottom of the boat. The tarpaulin obscured my vision almost completely.
“Flynn!” I knew he had heard me; he looked back at me quickly, then turned away. Something in his expression told me it wasn’t good news. “Is it Damien?” I yelled again. “Is he alive?”
Flynn pushed me back with a hand still partly wrapped in dripping bandage. “It’s no use,” he called, barely audible above the sound of the wind. “It’s over.”
With the tide at our stern we had made good headway toward the harbor; already it seemed to me that I could feel a lull in the waves. Omer sent a questioning look at Alain; Alain replied with one of dismay and incomprehension. Flynn didn’t look at either of them; instead he picked up a bucket and began to bail water, although by then the need for that had passed.
I grabbed Flynn’s arm and made him look at me. “For pity’s sake, Flynn, tell me! Is it Damien?”
All three men glanced at the tarpaulin, then back at me. Flynn’s expression was complex, unreadable. He looked down at his hands, which were raw from handling the wet ropes. “Mado,” he told me at last. “It’s your father.”
10
* * *
I remember it as a painting, a violent Van Gogh with swirling purple skies and blurry faces; in silence. I remember the boat lurching like a heart. I remember holding my hands up to my face and seeing the skin pale and puckered with seawater. I think maybe I fell.
GrosJean was lying half-covered by the tarpaulin sheet. For the first time I was truly aware of his hugeness, his dead and lumpen weight. He had lost his shoes somewhere along the way, and his feet looked small in comparison with the rest of him, almost delicate. When you hear about death you’re often told that the dead look asleep, at peace. GrosJean looked like an animal who has died in a trap. His flesh had the rubbery feel of a butcher shop’s pig
, his mouth open; a snarl drawing his lips up to reveal yellow teeth, as if at the last moment, in the face of death, he had finally found a voice. I didn’t feel that numbness of which so many of the bereaved speak; that merciful sense of unreality. Instead I felt a surge of terrible anger.
How dared he do this? After everything we had been through together, how dared he? I’d trusted him, I’d confided in him, I’d tried to make a fresh start. Was this what he’d thought of me? Was this what he’d thought of himself?
Someone took my arm; I was pounding my fists against my father’s clammy body; it felt like meat. “Mado, please.” It was Flynn. My anger surged again; without thinking, I whipped around and hit him across the mouth. He recoiled; I stumbled backward and fell onto the deck. Briefly I saw the Dog Star from behind a scud of cloud. The stars doubled, trebled, then filled the sky.
I heard later that they’d found Damien hiding in the goods hangar of Brismand 1, cold and hungry but unharmed. Apparently he had been trying to stow away on the mainland ferry when the trip was canceled.
Ghislain and Xavier had never reached Les Immortelles. They had spent hours trying, but eventually they had been forced to land Cécilia at La Goulue, and returned to the village just as the volunteers from La Houssinière were coming home.
Mercédès was waiting. She had met Aristide in the village, and there had been a fine screaming match between them, all inhibitions flung aside. Her meeting with Xavier and Ghislain was more restrained. Both young men were exhausted, but strangely euphoric. Their efforts at sea had not borne fruit; but it was clear that a new understanding had been reached between them. Where once they had been bitter rivals, now they were close to being friends again. Aristide began to berate his grandson for taking the Cécilia, but for the first time Xavier did not seem at all overawed. Instead he took Mercédès aside, with a smile very different from his usual shy manner, and though it was too early to speak of a reconciliation between them, Toinette secretly hoped for a favorable outcome.
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